Bill Tinsley: Choosing faith

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Tuesday

Jun 26, 2018 at 11:39 AMJun 26, 2018 at 11:39 AM

I always liked Stephen Hawking. I admired his brilliance and the courage he demonstrated in his fight with ALS. In March Dr. Hawking died at 76. A couple weeks ago, June 15, his ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey between the graves of Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton.

Hawking was diagnosed with ALS in 1963 when he was 21. The doctors gave him two years to live. For 55 years he defied the odds. His best known work, “A Brief History of Time,” sold more than three million copies.

I was saddened a few years ago when he said, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

It is difficult for me to comprehend how such a brilliant mind can reach the conclusion that all we observe in the universe is an accident, that there is no intelligent force or design behind our existence. It seems as illogical to me as finding a state-of-the-art functioning PC in the desert and concluding it just accidentally evolved from nowhere.

The question Hawking dealt with is bigger than any religion or denominational expression. It is also bigger than science. It is a question we all must face and answer. How we answer it makes a great deal of difference in how we live and how meaningful our lives are.

Hawking concluded that since there is no God, humans should seek to live the most valuable lives they can while on Earth. This too, makes no sense to me. If there is no God we are sucked into a black hole of non-existence and non-meaning. What does it matter?

If we argue that love matters then we are thrown back into the very lap of God. Love is the greatest and most mysterious reality in our existence, eclipsing all other discoveries. Who wants to live in a world of technological perfection and scientific achievement without love? A loveless world would leave us shallow, fragmented, lonely, isolated, fearful, and miserable. Here lies the greatest truth: “God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4:16). “We love because He first loved us.” “God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” Faith or non-faith is a choice. We can choose to believe that our world is the result of a creative God who desired and designed our existence from the tiniest molecule to the most distant star or we can choose not to believe. The historical resurrection of Jesus makes this more than wishful thinking. The idea that human beings are no more than computers that will one day crash and be discarded as junk leads nowhere. For my part, I will choose to believe. It is the only conclusion that seems to make any sense.

— Bill Tinsley reflects on current events and life experience from a faith perspective. Visit www.tinsleycenter.com. Email bill@tinsleycenter.com.